Western interpretations of the Cold War--both realist and neoconservative--have erred by exaggerating either the Kremlin's pragmatism or its aggressiveness, argues Vladislav Zubok. Explaining the interests, aspirations, illusions, fears, and misperceptions of the Kremlin leaders and Soviet elites, Zubok offers a Soviet perspective on the greatest standoff of the 20th century.

Moscow, December 25,1991: The Last Day of the Soviet Union

The implosion of the Soviet Union was the culmination of a gripping game played out between two men who intensely disliked each other and had different concepts for the future. Mikhail Gorbachev, a sophisticated and urbane reformer, sought to modernize and preserve the USSR; Boris Yeltsin, a coarse and a hard drinking “bulldozer,” wished to destroy the union and create a capitalist Russia. The defeat of the August 1991 coup attempt, carried out by hardline communists, shook Gorbachev’s authority and was a triumph for Yeltsin.

Revolution 1989: The Fall of the Soviet Empire

For more than 40 years, communism held eight European nations in its iron fist. Yet by the end of 1989, all of these nations had thrown off communism, declared independence, and embarked on the road to democracy.

Stalin: Breaker of Nations

In this book, the first to draw from recently released archives, Robert Conquest gives us Stalin as a child and student; as a revolutionary and communist theoretician; as a political animal skilled in amassing power and absolutely ruthless in maintaining it. He presents the landmarks of Stalin's rule: the clash with Lenin; collectivization; the Great Terror; the Nazi-Soviet pact and the Nazi-Soviet war; the anti-Semitic campaign that preceded his death; and the legacy he left behind.

The Red Flag: A History of Communism

In The Red Flag, Oxford professor David Priestland tells the epic story of a movement that has taken root in dozens of countries across 200 years, from its birth after the French Revolution to its ideological maturity in 19th-century Germany to its rise to dominance (and subsequent fall) in the 20th century.

Potsdam: The End of World War II and the Remaking of Europe

After Germany's defeat in World War II, Europe lay in tatters. Millions of refugees were dispersed across the continent. Food and fuel were scarce. Britain was bankrupt while Germany had been reduced to rubble. In July 1945, Harry Truman, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin gathered in a quiet suburb of Berlin to negotiate a lasting peace - a peace that would finally put an end to the conflagration that had started in 1914, a peace under which Europe could be rebuilt.

The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East

In The Fall of the Ottomans, award-winning historian Eugene Rogan brings the First World War and its immediate aftermath in the Middle East to vivid life, uncovering the often ignored story of the region's crucial role in the conflict.

The Cold War: A New History

Drawing on new and often startling information from newly opened Soviet, Eastern European, and Chinese archives, this thrilling account explores the strategic dynamics that drove the Cold War, provides illuminating portraits of its major personalities, and offers much fresh insight into its most crucial events. Riveting, revelatory, and wise, it tells a story whose lessons it is vitally necessary to understand as America once more faces an implacable ideological enemy.

ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror

Initially dismissed by US President Barack Obama, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has shocked the world by conquering massive territories in both countries and promising to create a vast new Muslim caliphate that observes the strict dictates of Sharia law. In ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror, American journalist Michael Weiss and Syrian analyst Hassan Hassan explain how these violent extremists evolved from a nearly defeated Iraqi insurgent group into a jihadi army of international volunteers who have conquered territory equal to the size of Great Britain.

Six Months in 1945: FDR, Stalin, Churchill, and Truman - from World War to Cold War

When Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill met in Yalta in February 1945, Hitler's armies were on the run and victory was imminent. The Big Three wanted to draft a blueprint for a lasting peace - but instead set the stage for a 44-year division of Europe into Soviet and western spheres of influence. After fighting side by side for nearly four years, their political alliance was rapidly fracturing. By the time the leaders met again in Potsdam in July 1945, Russians and Americans were squabbling over the future of Germany and Churchill was warning about an "iron curtain" being drawn down over the Continent.

Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth

A former Wall Street Journal editor and the current president and CEO of the Atlantic Council, Frederick Kempe draws on recently released documents and personal interviews to re-create the powder keg that was 1961 Berlin. In Cold War Berlin, the United States and the Soviet Union stand nose to nose, with the possibility of nuclear war just one misstep away.

Great Catastrophe: Armenians and Turks in the Shadow of Genocide

The destruction of the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire in 1915-16 was the greatest atrocity of World War I. Around one million Armenians were killed, and the survivors were scattered across the world. Although it is now a century old, the issue of what most of the world calls the Armenian Genocide of 1915 is still a live and divisive issue that mobilizes Armenians across the world, shapes the identity and politics of modern Turkey, and has consumed the attention of U.S. politicians for years.

The Devils' Alliance: Hitler's Pact With Stalin, 1939-1941

History remembers the Soviets and the Nazis as bitter enemies and ideological rivals - the two opposing totalitarian regimes of World War II whose conflict would be the defining and deciding clash of the war. Yet for nearly a third of the conflict's entire timespan, Hitler and Stalin stood side by side as partners.

Stalin, Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928

Volume One of Stalin begins and ends in January 1928 as Stalin boards a train bound for Siberia, about to embark upon the greatest gamble of his political life. He is now the ruler of the largest country in the world, but a poor and backward one, far behind the great capitalist countries in industrial and military power, encircled on all sides. In Siberia, Stalin conceives of the largest program of social reengineering ever attempted.

The Berlin Wall

The appearance of a hastily constructed barbed wire entanglement through the heart of Berlin during the night of 12-13 August 1961 was both dramatic and unexpected. Within days, it had started to metamorphose into a structure that would come to symbolise the brutal insanity of the Cold War: the Berlin Wall. A city of almost four million was cut ruthlessly in two, unleashing a potentially catastrophic East-West crisis and plunging the entire world for the first time into the fear of imminent missile-borne apocalypse.

The Great Terror: A Reassessment

The definitive work on Stalin's purges, The Great Terror was universally acclaimed when it first appeared in 1968. While the original volume had relied heavily on unofficial sources, later developments within the Soviet Union provided an avalanche of new material, which Conquest has mined to write this revised and updated edition of his classic work.

The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945

This Pulitzer Prize-winning history of World War II chronicles the dramatic rise and fall of the Japanese empire, from the invasion of Manchuria and China to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Told from the Japanese perspective, The Rising Sun is, in the author’s words, "a factual saga of people caught up in the flood of the most overwhelming war of mankind, told as it happened - muddled, ennobling, disgraceful, frustrating, full of paradox."

Goebbels: A Biography

In life and in his grisly family suicide, Goebbels was one of Hitler's most loyal acolytes. Though powerful in the party and in wartime Germany, Longerich's Goebbels is a man dogged by insecurities and consumed by his fierce adherence to the Nazi cause. Longerich engages and challenges the careful self-portrait that Goebbels left behind in his diaries, and, as he delves deep into the mind of Hitler's master propagandist, Longerich discovers firsthand how the Nazi message was conceived. This complete portrait of the man behind the message is sure to become a standard for historians and students of the Holocaust for years to come.

One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War

In October 1962, at the height of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union appeared to be sliding inexorably toward a nuclear conflict over the placement of missiles in Cuba. Veteran Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs has pored over previously untapped American, Soviet, and Cuban sources to produce the most authoritative book yet on the Cuban missile crisis.

The Rise and Fall of Soviet Communism: A History of 20th-Century Russia

From the Oval Office to the streets of Moscow, world leaders and ordinary citizens alike share interest and concerns about Russia. Can democracy survive there? What does the future hold for the once expansive and still powerful Russian nation? Is Soviet Communism truly dead? These are the kinds of questions diplomats struggle with every day.

Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956

At the end of World War II, the Soviet Union to its surprise and delight found itself in control of a huge swath of territory in Eastern Europe. Stalin and his secret police set out to convert a dozen radically different countries to Communism, a completely new political and moral system. In Iron Curtain, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anne Applebaum describes how the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe were created and what daily life was like once they were complete.

Phantom Terror: Political Paranoia and the Creation of the Modern State, 1789 - 1848

Phantom Terror explores this troubled, fascinating period, when politicians and cultural leaders from Edmund Burke to Mary Shelley were forced to choose sides and either support or resist the counterrevolutionary spirit embodied in the newly omnipotent central states. The turbulent political situation that coalesced during this era would lead directly to the revolutions of 1848 and to the collapse of order in World War I.

Spain: The Centre of the World 1519-1682

The Golden Age of the Spanish Empire would establish five centuries of Western supremacy across the globe and usher in an era of transatlantic exploration that eventually gave rise to the modern world. It was a time of discovery and adventure, of great political and social change - it was a time when Spain learned to rule the world.

A Superpower Transformed: The Remaking of American Foreign Relations in the 1970s

During the 1970s, American foreign policy faced a predicament of clashing imperatives - US decision makers, already struggling to maintain stability and devise strategic frameworks to guide the exercise of American power during the Cold War, found themselves hampered by the emergence of dilemmas that would come to a head in the post-Cold War era. Their choices proved to be of enormous consequence for the development of American foreign policy in the final decades of the twentieth century and beyond.

George F. Kennan: An American Life

Drawing on extensive interviews with George Kennan and exclusive access to his archives, an eminent scholar of the Cold War delivers a revelatory biography of its troubled mastermind. This is a landmark work of history and biography that reveals the vast influence and rich inner landscape of a life that both mirrored and shaped the century it spanned.

Publisher's Summary

Western interpretations of the Cold War - both realist and neoconservative - have erred by exaggerating either the Kremlin's pragmatism or its aggressiveness, argues Vladislav Zubok. Explaining the interests, aspirations, illusions, fears, and misperceptions of the Kremlin leaders and Soviet elites, Zubok offers a Soviet perspective on the greatest standoff of the 20th century.

What the Critics Say

"Ranks as the new standard work on the Soviet Union's Cold War - for scholars and students alike.... An excellent combination of old and new, offering both a synthetic interpretation of Soviet foreign policy in the latter half of the twentieth century and fresh new material to reconceptualize the factors behind that policy.... An important book [and] a standout." (Journal of American History)

This is a history of the Cold War, largely from the perspective of the Kremlin. The author unapologetically emphasizes the effect of personality on the course of the Cold War. In fact, he argues that the personalities in the Kremlin were decisive. Unlike many historians, he thinks highly of Brezhnev and even Andropov. His evaluations of Kruschev and Gorbachev are mixed.

Zubok's scholarship and grasp of detail are impressive, and he makes good use of the new historical materials which have become available since the late 1990's. Personally, I suspect his analysis is completely off base. However, one of the virtues of the book is that Zubok gives the reader enough solid information to make a personal judgment possible.

The narration is a bit mechanical, but clear and well-paced. This may be because Zubok's writing could be described in almost the same words. This is solid, well-crafted political biography -- not really history in the broader sense. However, if, like me, you lived through many of those events and always wondered, "why did they do that? What were they thinking?" then this book will go a long way towards answering those questions.

If this seems contradictory, consider an example: Zubok explains almost nothing about the internal economic problems of the USSR. However, he thoroughly explores the Soviet leadership's deep ignorance of these issues and how that ignorance affected their decisions. He doesn't really explain the deep stagnation of the Soviet apparat, but is brilliant in explaining how this dead weight isolated the top leadership and constrained their thinking.

This book covers the period from the end of World War II through the end of the Soviet Union as seen through the eyes of the Soviet leadership and, as such, it adds a great deal to a balanced view of what happened and why. While it may not be surprising that the Soviets viewed the causes of the crises that arose between the Soviet Union and the West differently it is sometimes surprising to find out exactly how they viewed these causes and what they saw as the possible solutions. This book is written by Vladimir Zubok who appears to have been a member of the Soviet government during part of the time covered by the book and his views and statements are backed up by Soviet archives. The book seemed to me to be facts, as seen from the other side, not just opinion.

In looking at the period from 1945 through 1991, when the Soviet Union dissolved, the book looks at the actions of each of the Soviet leaders – Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Gorbachev and the others – and I found it interesting to find out what was on their minds, how and why they proceeded as they did and what others in the leadership thought of their actions.

I found the book to be slow going at first and I was unsure if I could actually finish it. However either I got used to the somewhat wooden narration or the book became more interesting after the first 3 or 4 hours. All of the book is interesting enough and I found that it changed my view of the causes of some of the events covered. In particular it became clear that the Soviet Union was falling apart in it's last decade and that had someone other than Mikhail Gorbachev been head of the Soviet State things might have ended quite differently.

While this book stands on it's own I found it helpful to have also read “Revolution 1989: The Fall of the Soviet Empire” as the two give a very good view of the last 10 years or so of the Soviet Union's existence. The feeling that the whole system was coming apart is clear in both books. The end of the Soviet Union was an enormous political event and this book does it's part in explaining what led up to and transpired during that event as seen from the Soviet side. As such I think it is helpful in understanding the late 20th century.

As I mentioned I think that the narration of this book is a bit wooden and uninspiring. It is not bad, it is just not very good. Still, I believe this book is a help in understanding what happened and, as such, I feel I can recommend it in spite of the narration.

A Failed Empire was interesting in that most Americans are familiar with the Western perspective on the important events of the Cold War - the Berlin Wall, Cuban missile crisis, etc. This book uses Russian sources to reveal the reasons behind some seemingly contradictory policies pursued by the USSR, and highlighted the unwillingness of some apparently belligerent Soviet leaders to risk actual war. The book is long and detailed, but worth the trouble.

his contemporary Russian perspective on Cold War history includes at least a few scenes that are BEGGING for a dramatic depiction on television.

ESPECIALLY: In 1972, upon Henry Kissinger's arrival on a visit to the USSR, a drunken, sedative-drugged Brezhnev insisted on taking Kissinger on a bat-out-of-hell high-speed car ride. Brezhnev also took "a terrified Nixon" on a high-speed car ride while on a state visit to America.

I recommend reading this book after watching or re-watching the movie, "Planes, Trains & Automobiles".

An basic History 101 overview of an era, but lacking in colour until you get to Gorbachev, and to a lesser extent Brezhnev. Possibly because the lack of freedom means very little in the way of candid records and reflections in time of Stalin and Kruschev. . The Gorbachev period has much more colour in the form of contemporaneous comments from supporters and foes.

The basic question the author asks is whether personalities or historical forces account for the downfall of the Soviet empire. The author concludes that personalities were of greater importance than is generally accepted in contemporary academic historiography. However, the next question is never asked: is the importance of personality the result of a system of personal dictatorship, as distinct from democracies where historical forces are felt through the ballot box. A related point: the author condemns (albeit weakly) Gorbachev's "failure" to use force to hold the Soviet Union together. Another question is not asked, one that is related to the one just mentioned: was the Soviet Union ever anything but an artificial state and society, in the sense that it had to be held together by oppressive force, or not at all.

The narrator is uneven. Sometimes he seems to get bored and sounds like a robot. Also, when will audio publishers make sure the narrators know how to pronounce foreign names and words? The most grating example, but not the only: Levesque pronounced several times as "Levesk".

I've read where people have said this is a pro-Russian version of the events or the history of the events from the Russian point of view. I don't believe this is a case, this is more of an opinion book than a history book. I know a ton about WWII and a good deal about the Cold War and the author routinely leaves out crutical information to shape the story to match his opinion. The book does not seem to be very well researched, it seems to be a lot of conculssions based purely on the authors point of view. It's hard to recommend this book and certainly if you did read this book do yourself a huge favor and make sure you actually read some other real history.-

It always takes a generation for history to be processed, and the wisdom of time shows in Zubok's insightful history of the failure of the Soviet imperial project. Instead of earlier post Cold War histories, such as Leffler's Struggle for the Soul of Mankind, which focused on American failure to deescalate the CW, Zubok instead focuses on the outsized role Soviet leaders and their conceptions of ideology played in creating the conflict and allowing for its peaceful end. Rich in fascinating detail and very well structured, this book should serve for a generation as the definitive statement on the rise and fall of the Soviet Empire, "one of the strangest (empires) in world history."

Being somewhat interested in the Cold War and soviet history I thought that I would "chance my arm" and see what this book would bring. I was not disappointed. A very well researched book which provides a behind the iron curtain insight into the era of brinkmanship behind the public face of both US and Soviet politics during the period described in the title.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and its narrator, who does the writing justice, listening for hours on end it made me switch the tv off over Christmas.

A well written and compelling history of a period which to most European people of my age (42) will provide insight into the tension that led us all to live in fear of nuclear attack. It also provides a realisation of how financial pressure and political reform ended the Soviet Unions pretence to empire and ultimately the end of Soviet Communism.

Listened to twice and now on my third listen, this is simply because I enjoy it and there is a vast amount of information contained within, I will definitely be back to listen maybe three or four times a year.

Armchair history buffs this book is for you!

5 of 5 people found this review helpful

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